When I was 12 years old, a story began circulating around my hometown of Moose Jaw about a group called “The Cult.”
This group had apparently sacrificed some cats in some sort of ritual and the rumour was that they were going to do something even worse. Soon, “Cult” graffiti and symbols started appearing all over town. It was all we talked about on the playground at school.
One night during that time, I went to a movie with a bunch of guys from school. My assumption was that after the show, we would all walk home together. However, as it turned out, everyone else had something else going on, which meant that I had to walk more than a mile home, at ten o’clock at night, by myself.
Soon, I started to see the cult everywhere. Every set of headlights was a car full of cult members coming to get me. Every group of people on the other side of the street was just waiting to grab me. It was the longest walk of my life.
Stories are powerful and we are shaped by what we believe to be true. That is not just true of 12-year-old boys who have to walk home alone, it is true of adults too. When people buy into stories that say things like, “If I wasn’t so stupid, I wouldn’t make so many mistakes,” or “My Dad was right. I am useless,” then we end up living out of the consequences of that thinking.
If things are going to get better, we need to start telling ourselves some better stories. Here is a good place to start: “For God so loved the world [you] that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16-17).
Luke 15 has three good stories about how God rejoices when lost things are found. Those are worth telling to ourselves and others.
Once we know the true story about who God is and about who we are, it changes everything. As Jesus once said “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free!” (John 8:32).
We need to get our story straight.
